


Bitter Watches of the Night

by starsoverhead



Series: Criminal Minds:  Starfleet [2]
Category: Criminal Minds
Genre: Alternate Universe, Angst, Borg - Freeform, Friendship, M/M, Pre-Slash, Star Trek - Freeform, Wolf 359
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-09-09
Updated: 2012-09-09
Packaged: 2017-11-13 21:26:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,268
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/507874
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/starsoverhead/pseuds/starsoverhead
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A bit of worldbuilding for my CM/ST:TNG AU.  Some background on Hotch, Reid, and their friendship.  Hotch lost someone very important to him.  Reid had a difficult childhood.  But they understand each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Bitter Watches of the Night

JAG usually worked from starbases or established Federation planetary stations.  Being on a ship was usually just a matter of transportation.  If something happened aboard a starship, the usual procedure was to cancel the mission and go directly to the nearest starbase.

Why his team had been deployed to this starship, then, was a matter of curiosity.  And for the first time, while Aaron sat at a desk that wasn’t his, watching stars speed by, becoming lines outside the viewports, he found that the hum of of the Galaxy-class engines was enough to irritate him instead of soothe.

After a few moments, he caught himself daydreaming of someone’s hands on his shoulders, kneading and loosening and making him think clearly instead of thinking in these damned knots that all ended in him wondering just what Strauss had planned for his people this time.

Just once, he thought - just once, he’d give almost everything to hear a sleepy voice telling him to come back to bed, but that was something he’d never hear again.  Not after Wolf 359.

Everyone in Starfleet had a Wolf 359 story.  Everyone could say where they were that day.  If they hadn’t lost someone dear to them, they had a friend who had.  Aaron was no different.

True, his marriage had already been strained.  He was in JAG.  She’d joined only after seeing how his career had been going.  JAG was generally safe.  Yes, sometimes there were violent outbursts when someone was arrested who didn’t want to be, but more often than not, even with all of the transfers from place to place, it was a safe job.

Starfleet had seemed so, so logical.  So perfect.  The idea that if she joined, she could transfer with him, join him wherever he went.  Her field was linguistics, and if one thing always held true, it was that linguists were always needed.  JAG officers, instead, did a lot of the old, traditional hurry-up-and-wait.

She was the one deployed.  She was the one on starships.  He was the one who had raised their beautiful blonde-haired boy named Jack, who looked so much like his mother that sometimes he felt like he was being stabbed.

His mother, who had been on a research mission, whose ship was on the way in for reports - a ship that was supposed to be a science vessel, but had been pressed into service thanks to Locutus of Borg—

It was wrong of him to harbor a grudge toward Picard.  It hadn’t been his fault.  It hadn’t been an act of hubris that had gotten him assimilated, but that had been his _wife_ , even if they’d been in the process of separating.  His wife.  The mother of his child.

And there weren’t even remains to bury.  Only the knowledge that all aboard the _Bonestell_ were dead.  He was only glad that Jack didn’t have the nightmares he did, about bleach-white skin and black mechanicals melded into a single form, with one human, recognisable, eye looking back at him, naming him, telling him that resistance was futile.

There was no such thing as futile resistance as it came to his son.  He’d fight a Q for Jack.

But that still didn’t soothe the empty nights aboard the starbases.  Or the starships.  Or the ground-based stations.  It felt so hollow anymore.

Rubbing his hands over his face, Aaron sighed and stood.  Just once, he thought.  Just once, he wanted a warm body waiting for him in bed.  One that would wrap an arm around him, keep him close, sleep beside him…

The words floated to him from a distant memory.  _Oh, but you are alone.  Who knows what you have spoken to the darkness, alone, in the bitter watches of the night, when all your life seems to shrink…_

It took love to soothe Eowyn’s chill.  What would it take to make his nightmares go away?  Aaron sighed.  It would take more, he thought, than he would ever be able to wrap his hands around anymore.  Sometimes a person had to be content with what they had.  Even if it meant a cold, empty bed.

It was the equivalent of what had once been called jet lag, sometimes, coming out onto a starship where the people they were to investigate were on a different shift cycle than they were on.  He’d recommended all of his people go to their quarters and get some rest - and that was why the door chime had startled him.

The lights in his room were still dimmed when he answered, “Yes?”

On the other side of the door stood his sleepy-looking friend, raking a hand through his hair, who stepped into the dimmed quarters like he belonged there.  “You were projecting,” Reid told him, approaching him slowly.  The younger man was still in his nightclothes and that made two of them, though only Reid’s were rumpled from sleep.

But Aaron winced.  “Sorry—  Wait.”  He turned to face Reid, where he was leaning against the window nearby.  “Projecting?”

“I could feel your waves of black-dark-loneliness while I was sleeping,” he answered.  “Where do you think the Tolkein came from?”

“You used to only be able to do that by touch,” Hotch returned.  “What happened?”

“I’ve worked with you for nearly a decade.  We end up sharing quarters on small ships since I refuse to bunk with any of the others.  I talk to you more than I talk to anyone else.  Maybe I’m just receptive to your empathic frequencies.  Besides,” he said, standing and taking a step closer, “we both have some Betazoid in our lineage.”

That, Aaron couldn’t deny.  It was more visible in Hotch with his dark eyes and dark hair, but the abilities were stronger in Reid.  From his mother, both of them knew.  He exhaled.  “Point to you.”

“C’mere,” he said then and Aaron, too tired both physically and emotionally to resist, did.  They’d done this before and it helped - the gentle touch of Reid’s hand on his temple as, with the gentlest mental ‘fingers’, he began to soothe away the psychic stress that Aaron put himself under.

Spencer Reid was, at his core, resilient.  Abandoned by his human father when his Betazoid abilities began to develop early, victim of ill-treatment in a colony that had gone wrong, exploited by illegal goods dealers when he’d tried to find a way to get his mother to treatment — and yet, now, there was a warmth and generosity in him that Aaron found he appreciated to his core.  He couldn’t trust anyone else with his stresses, but Reid understood the need for privacy.

And in these moments, when he even felt his shoulders and back let loose their knots thanks to Reid’s attentions, he didn’t feel so lonely.  He felt understood.  Accepted.  And when Reid gently withdrew and looked at him with a small smile, Aaron looked at him gratefully.  “I owe you,” he said, almost reluctant to speak at all.

But Spencer shook his head.  “I would have you smile again, not grieve for those whose time has come. You shall live to see these days renewed. No more despair.”

“More Tolkien?”

Reid smiled, and Aaron felt himself smile in return.  “Come to bed.  M’too tired to walk back to my quarters.”

True to his word, Reid stepped over and dropped into the wide bed and Hotch, amused, slid into the other side.  They didn’t touch, but Aaron, at least, felt better for having someone else beside him.  And before he knew it, he was asleep without even a moment to worry about just what tomorrow’s investigation would bring.


End file.
